Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology, 35043, Marburg, Germany.
LOEWE Center for Synthetic Microbiology (SYNMIKRO), 35043, Marburg, Germany.
Nat Commun. 2020 Jul 13;11(1):3494. doi: 10.1038/s41467-020-17276-4.
Cellular processes are inherently noisy, and the selection for accurate responses in presence of noise has likely shaped signalling networks. Here, we investigate the trade-off between accuracy of information transmission and its energetic cost for a mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signalling cascade. Our analysis of the pheromone response pathway of budding yeast suggests that dose-dependent induction of the negative transcriptional feedbacks in this network maximizes the information per unit energetic cost, rather than the information transmission capacity itself. We further demonstrate that futile cycling of MAPK phosphorylation and dephosphorylation has a measurable effect on growth fitness, with energy dissipation within the signalling cascade thus likely being subject to evolutionary selection. Considering optimization of accuracy versus the energetic cost of information processing, a concept well established in physics and engineering, may thus offer a general framework to understand the regulatory design of cellular signalling systems.
细胞过程本质上是嘈杂的，在存在噪声的情况下选择准确的反应可能塑造了信号网络。在这里，我们研究了信息传输的准确性与其能量成本之间的权衡，以用于丝裂原活化蛋白激酶（MAPK）信号级联。我们对芽殖酵母的信息素反应途径的分析表明，网络中负转录反馈的剂量依赖性诱导最大限度地提高了单位能量成本的信息量，而不是信息传输能力本身。我们进一步证明，MAPK 磷酸化和去磷酸化的无效循环对生长适应性有可衡量的影响，信号级联中的能量耗散因此可能受到进化选择的影响。考虑到准确性与信息处理的能量成本之间的优化，这是物理和工程学中已经确立的概念，因此可能为理解细胞信号系统的调节设计提供一个通用框架。
